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Official information act requests
People in New Zealand can request government information (official information) and can expect it to be made available unless there is a good reason to withhold it.
About official information requests
The Official Information Act 1982 (OIA) enables citizens, permanent residents, visitors present in New Zealand, and body corporates registered or with a place of business in New Zealand, to make a request for official information held by government agencies or Ministers, including the Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport (MCERT).
MCERT is committed to supporting the principles of the Public Service Act 2020 and Official Information Act 1982 (OIA), by promoting transparency in government, increasing the availability of official information and improving internal processes used to prepare information for release or publication.
Making a request
You do not need to mention the OIA to make a request but to assist us with allocating and processing your request, please be as clear and specific as you can.
You can contact us in a number of ways to request information:
- OIA@mcert.govt.nz(opens in new tab)
- Housing related queries: 0800 646 483
- General questions: 0800 499 700
- Postal address: PO Box 82 Wellington 6140
When you contact us, please include:
- your name
- contact address (email or postal)
- details of the information you are seeking
- details of the timeframes of the information you are seeking.
We may contact you if we need to understand, in more detail, what you are looking for.
If you make your request by phone or in person, we will ask for contact details from you and confirm your request in writing to ensure we have captured correctly the information you are seeking.
Information you can request
The OIA sets out your rights to request official information. ‘Official Information’ means any information held by the agency, including:
- briefings, Cabinet papers, reports, memos, letters, notes, advice and emails
- materials like tape recordings, videos or computer records
- internal policies or guidelines for decision making
- reasons for decisions made on a previous OIA request.
This is not an exhaustive list of the information you can request but reflects the most common types of information requests we receive.
Requesting information about yourself
As an individual you can request information about yourself. Requests for personal information are processed under the Privacy Act. You can find more information about privacy requests form the Privacy Commissioner. We will always make sure to tell you whether have responded to your request under the OIA and/or the Privacy Act.
Contacting the right agency
The Ministry of Justice’s Directory of Official Information outlines information held by different agencies.
See directory of official information (Ministry of Justice)(opens in new tab)
If we do not hold the information you have asked for, and we think that another agency or Minister may hold the requester information, we will transfer your request to them.
We will do this promptly and within 10 working days, although it is possible to extend this timeframe in certain circumstances.
We will let you know if we have transferred your request and to whom we have transferred it.
Requesting information in a specific format
You can ask for information to be provided to you in a specific format. For example, you can ask for oral information to be provided to you or to review information in person (inspect files). You can also ask for the information to be provided in an electronic or paper format.
If we are unable to provide it in the way you have requested, we will explain why.
Changing your request
If you would like to change your request, you can contact us and ask to amend your request. If you do change your request, we will let you know whether this will impact on the time it will take to respond.
Making a decision on your request
We will find all the information you have asked for and review it carefully. In order to make a decision on your request, we may need to consult with other agencies or people who might be affected by release of the information.
Withholding information
We will make the information you request available unless there is a reason why we are unable to do so (for example, the information isn’t held or can’t be found) or there is ‘good reason’ for withholding it.
Reasons for withholding are specified in the legislation (section 6 and section 9 of the OIA). As part of our decision on your request, we will consider whether there are public interest considerations that mean we should release the information. We will then balance the public interest against the harms that we see from release of the information. If the public interest is greater than the harm, then the information will be released.
When we withhold information, we will tell you which part of the OIA applies.
Timeframe for a request
We will acknowledge your request and are required by law to give you our decision on your request as soon as practicable, and no later than 20 working days after the day your request is received.
If we need more time to make our decision on your request, for example if you are requesting a lot of information, we will let you know and give you an idea of how long it will take. We will also try to keep you updated on the progress of our response to your request.
Cost of a request
Requesting official information is free, though we can charge a reasonable amount if it will take a lot of work to supply the information requested. These charges must be reasonable, and may reflect some of the cost of labour (including to retrieve and collect the information and materials in meeting your request). If a charge is proposed we will contact you first to confirm that you wish to proceed, or whether you prefer to change your request to reduce or remove the cost.
The Ministry of Justice and the Office of the Ombudsman both have guidance on charging.
See charging guidelines for OIA requests (Ministry of Justice)(opens in new tab)
You can complain to the Office of the Ombudsman about a decision to charge.
See complaints about government agencies (Office of the Ombudsman)(opens in new tab)
Publishing your request on the MCERT website
We will consider publishing our response to your OIA request where the information is believed to be of interest to the wider public and is suitable for publication more generally.
Your personal information (for example your name and contact details) and any other information that may identify you, will be removed before publishing.
Raising concerns about your OIA
You may wish to contact us in the first instance to see if we can resolve the issue.
You can make a complaint to the Office of the Ombudsman if you:
- have concerns regarding the decision we made on your request
- were unhappy about the way your request was treated or processed.
These concerns can relate to the withholding of information, extending the timeframe to respond to you, any charges for providing the information you have requested, delays in providing you with a decision or the information, or your request being transferred.
The Office of the Ombudsman can investigate and review our decision and may make a recommendation to us if it is considered appropriate.
OIA statistics and reporting
You can see data on the number of requests MCERT receives each year and the timeliness of our responses on the Public Service Commission’s Official Information Act statistics page.
As MCERT was established from 1 July 2026, MCERT statistics will be collected in the next reporting round. In the interim, you can review published statistics related to MCERT’s founding agencies: Ministry for the Environment, Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Ministry of Transport and the Department of Internal Affairs (Local Government).